Possible of memory leak in the loop

Question

Recently my application do get OutOfMemory issue. I realized the memory is keep on stack up as i saw in the task manager, the jlaunch keep growing and it won't drop back. That day i'm running a search function and it will query the table to retrieve the data. The jlaunch shoot from 500MB -> 2.2GB and now remain in there. Wondering is it during it query it populate at least 10,000 records into the arraylist and then the memory already allocated and once i finish run the function, it will clear the allocated memory to re-use it.
public ArrayList ejbHomeInJDBCConnection(Map map){
     ArrayList beanList = new ArrayList();
     try{
          Context ctx = new InitialContext();
          DataSource ds = (DataSource) ctx.lookup("jdbc/POOL");
          Connection con = ds.getConnection();
          String query = "SELECT * FROM USER WHERE ";
          for (Iterator iterator = map.keySet().iterator(); iterator.hasNext();) {
               Object key = iterator.next();
               if(key.toString().startsWith("TIME") | key.toString().startsWith("TIMEIN")){
                    long longValue = Long.parseLong(map.get(key).toString());
                    query += key.toString()+ longValue + " AND ";      
               }else{
                    String value = (String)map.get(key);
                    query += key.toString()+ value + " AND ";      
          String newquery = query.substring(0, query.length()-5);
          newquery += " ORDER BY TIMEIN DESC";
          Statement stmt = con.createStatement();
          try {
               ResultSet rs = stmt.executeQuery(newquery);
              try {
                    while (rs.next()){
                         InBean bean = new InBean();
                         bean.setSmsId(rs.getString("EMP"));
                         beanList.add(bean);
               }finally{
                    rs.close();
          }finally{
               stmt.close();
     }catch(Exception e){
          System.err.println(e.fillInStackTrace());
return beanList;
Wondering is it the InBean will cause any memory leak as if there is 10,000 records, which mean it will create 10,000 objects and once it add into the arraylist the previous bean is not in use, will the GC clear it as i didn't set it as null. Do i need to do something like reallocate/defragment the memory?
Thanks.

Answer 1

Hi,
I'm sure a "count" would not generate the overhead you are concerned.
To understand some aspects, you need to read the source files of Java, and understand how the stack would work in your case.
Evertime you "add" an element to you list, the implementation will run the ensureCapacity, and grown the list one by one. Understand that the list is an Array with a lot more functions, but below, you are still working with an Array, and it needs to have a defined size. Everytime you add, it's doing a System.arraycopy(all the crap) - So you can save this, everytime you add something if you create your List with the right size.
Note, this is not an issue if we consider small lists, of small objects, but working with large lists, you can feel slow downs.
About the GC stuff, well.. I'm sure you can do some reading how it works. One good start point would be
Link: [http://java.sun.com/docs/hotspot/gc1.4.2/]
I'm sure you don't need that, but still, it's good reading. Maybe you should just increase your heap size, or you can manually clear the List using list.clear();
Rgds,
Daniel